45 pages • 1 hour read
John WyndhamThe Day of the Triffids
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Comet
Comets are celestial phenomena that are touted as a once-in-a-lifetime event. They symbolized hope and kinship as people often gather to enjoy the spectacle. However, in The Day of the Triffids, a comet is the catalyst for mass blindness. Bill suggests the comet was not a celestial body at all but a weapons satellite, saying it was no coincidence that this disaster occurred after mankind was able to launch weapons into space. Thus, the comet symbolizes man’s folly and penchant for destruction.
Blindness
Blindness symbolizes man’s inability to see or think clearly. The narrative alludes that humanity learned nothing from the atrocities of World War II. Instead of pursuing peace, governments launched satellite weaponry without giving any thought to potential, disastrous consequences. As such, a metaphorical blindness was made literal.
Similarly, the lack of clarity around triffids leads to death and destruction. Many people simply wrote the plant species off as something alien and refused to see its potential for intelligence. Even faced with the truth once triffids rise up after the comet event, people reject it. Coker cannot fathom triffids’ cleverness despite watching one lie in wait for a human victim: “It couldn’t have known he’d come out of that door…. I mean, it couldn’t—could it?” (131).
Bill knows people will always make mistakes because of their blind ignorance of the truth. For that reason, he disagrees with Josella’s desire to tell their children a myth to explain the mass blindness. Bill does not think it is right to keep children in the dark: “It’s often a good idea to tell children the truth. Kind of makes things easier for them later on—only why pretend it’s a myth?” (172). He believes truth will set humankind free.
Triffids
Triffids are the primary antagonist in the novel once most of the human population goes blind. Most likely a plant-like experiment gone wrong, humans farmed and enslaved the species when it first appeared. Aside from a select few—most notably Bill and his old colleague Walter—no one gave any thought to whether triffids had an animal-like intelligence, even as they watched the plants walk around and kill prey.
Their dominance is foreshadowed in a flashback to a conversation Bill had with Walter. Walter warns that triffids may possess an intelligence that would make them the superior species if humans do not wise up: “[…] if it were a choice for survival between a triffid and a blind man, I know which I’d put my money on” (34). Soon, the world is overrun by triffids, who hunt and herd humans much like they themselves were treated before the comet. By the novel’s end, it is clear that the only way to defeat the triffids is to learn the truth of their existence.
Loneliness
Loneliness is a motif that appears in many forms throughout the novel. Though Bill is initially elated that he does not have any family to worry about in the aftermath of the comet, he eventually discovers loneliness is a deadly presence. In time, he sees loneliness as a catastrophe akin to the blindness and sickness that are ravaging the world. He describes it as “Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care” (144).
Another form loneliness takes is chosen isolation, which the novel repeatedly proves is a perilous way to live. Bill provides the first example, as he decides the best way to survive is to stay away from others. He quickly figures out, however, that desperate blind people’s mob mentality creates a nearly insurmountable danger for sighted individuals. Later, Miss Durrant decides to isolate her group of survivors to maintain a strict, Christian lifestyle. Her inflexibility leads to the destruction of the group and, no doubt, her own death. In contrast, Michael Beadley’s group works together to exterminate the Isle of Wight population of triffids, leading to a thriving human oasis.
